They had limited capacity.
One pivot covered the southern acreage.
The rest depended on rainfall.
The Older Farmer had always considered irrigation unnecessary on the better ground.
Most years he was right.
This was not most years.
“Run the pivot overnight.”
“Already scheduled.”
“What about tanker?”
“For corn?”
The Older Farmer knew the answer.
Impossible at meaningful scale.
He looked across the road.
The Young Farm Woman did not have irrigation either.
That should have comforted him.
It did not.
Her soil had become her reservoir.
Not unlimited.
But larger than his.
He began paying attention to things he previously ignored.
After a rare half-inch storm finally arrived, water ran visibly from one of his compacted headlands toward the ditch.
He stood beneath the rain watching brown water leave his property.
Across the road, the Young Farm Woman stood in her own field.
She was watching too.
The rain stopped.
The Older Farmer walked across.
No greeting.
“How much did you get?”
“Four-tenths.”
“Same.”
She nodded.
He looked down.
No standing water.
No obvious runoff channel.
“Where’d it go?”
She almost laughed.
“Down.”
“How fast?”
She pointed toward a metal ring driven partly into the soil.
“You measure that too?”
“Yes.”
“What don’t you measure?”
“My patience.”
He smiled despite himself.
Then became serious.
“How much difference?”
“In infiltration?”
“Yes.”
She gave him the numbers from her recent tests.
His eyebrows rose.
“That’s not all clover.”
“No.”
“What else?”
“Roots.”
“Residue.”
“Less disturbance.”
“More organic matter over time.”
“Worm channels.”
He stared at the ground.
“You telling me worms saved your corn?”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“I’m telling you farms usually fail from combinations and survive from combinations.”
He hated complicated answers.
Simple answers could be bought.
Spray this.
Plant that.
Buy this machine.
Apply this product.
Complicated answers required changing management.
Sometimes identity.
He walked home without another insult.
The drought intensified.
By late July, county roads became lined with cornfields showing uneven stress.
Some held better due to deeper soils.
Some failed because of shallow rooting.
Some irrigated farms remained excellent.
Some dryland fields were damaged severely.
The Young Farm Woman’s field remained one of the best-looking dryland fields in the area.
That attracted people.
Pickup trucks began slowing.
Some stopped.
The Young Farm Woman hated this almost as much as ridicule.
One farmer arrived carrying a shovel.
“Can I dig?”
She looked at him.
“Where?”
“Between rows.”
“If you avoid roots.”
He dug.
The soil beneath the mulch was not wet.
That disappointed him.
“I thought it’d be wet.”